Publication
Harper Perennial (2007), Edition: (Reissue), 240 pages
Original publication date
1967
Collections
Awards
The Guardian 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read (Science Fiction and Fantasy)
Description
Flann O'Brien's most popular and surrealistic novel concerns an imaginary, hellish village police force and a local murder. Weird, satirical, and very funny, its popularity has suddenly increased after the novel was featured in the October 2005 episode of the hit television series Lost.
User reviews
LibraryThing member JimElkins
Everyone has a theory about this novel. There are at least four common kinds of explanations:
1. Flann O'Brien is the forgotten postmodernist, the one who didn't leave Ireland. The "Third Policeman" is one of the last books Joyce read, and by implication the "Third Policeman" is a kind of
2. Flann O'Brien was an alcoholic, and this is the product of so many unhappy binges and half-remembered delusions. The book is an indirect but eloquent record of that generation in Ireland, when the humor was desperate, when the church was all-powerful, when what's now called "homosocial" life in crowded dingy pubs had to stand in for wider society.
3. Flann O'Brien is a member of what Hugh Kenner called "Irish nihilism." There is no moral sense in the book, which after all begins with someone's head being crushed by a garden spade. This also supposedly explains the absence of contrition or any religious feeling. Denis Donoghue almost assents to this in his strange and covertly republican Afterword to the Dalkey Archive edition.
4. Flann O'Brien is a minimalist, with deep ties to Beckett. This is one of the lines in Fintan O'Toole's 2009 review in the "New York Review of Books."
The fact that these are all forced or unhelpful should probably indicate that the book is stranger than its commentators think. But the fact that people keep coming up with these one-line explanations shows how the novel keeps prodding its readers: it is just too strange to be accepted as a mid-century modernist novel, and for many readers a theory, no matter how artificial, helps soothe the discomfort. But what is the avant-garde, if it isn't a thing that is not anticipated? That can't be accommodated? That wasn't asked for, that solves no problem we ever thought we had?
One thing I especially love about the "Third Policeman" is the sense of Irish landscape that it conjures, in between its many fantasies and concoctions. If you take away the hallucinated afterlife that occupies most of the book, what remains? A very poor, simple countryside, with farms and a few police stations and pubs, and miles of bumpy roads, sodden fields, muck, brambles, dripping copses, and gorse. There is almost nothing else: people ride bicycles everywhere. When they think they might become rich, they dream of changes of clothes. There is almost no mention of what they eat or drink. It is an impoverished landscape -- and in relation to it, O'Brien's perverse and perfervid inventions are even more desperate, more necessary, and more painful.
1. Flann O'Brien is the forgotten postmodernist, the one who didn't leave Ireland. The "Third Policeman" is one of the last books Joyce read, and by implication the "Third Policeman" is a kind of
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Doppelgaenger to "Finnegans Wake." Its play with language and its reflexivity about the novel form is somehow parallel to Joyce's.2. Flann O'Brien was an alcoholic, and this is the product of so many unhappy binges and half-remembered delusions. The book is an indirect but eloquent record of that generation in Ireland, when the humor was desperate, when the church was all-powerful, when what's now called "homosocial" life in crowded dingy pubs had to stand in for wider society.
3. Flann O'Brien is a member of what Hugh Kenner called "Irish nihilism." There is no moral sense in the book, which after all begins with someone's head being crushed by a garden spade. This also supposedly explains the absence of contrition or any religious feeling. Denis Donoghue almost assents to this in his strange and covertly republican Afterword to the Dalkey Archive edition.
4. Flann O'Brien is a minimalist, with deep ties to Beckett. This is one of the lines in Fintan O'Toole's 2009 review in the "New York Review of Books."
The fact that these are all forced or unhelpful should probably indicate that the book is stranger than its commentators think. But the fact that people keep coming up with these one-line explanations shows how the novel keeps prodding its readers: it is just too strange to be accepted as a mid-century modernist novel, and for many readers a theory, no matter how artificial, helps soothe the discomfort. But what is the avant-garde, if it isn't a thing that is not anticipated? That can't be accommodated? That wasn't asked for, that solves no problem we ever thought we had?
One thing I especially love about the "Third Policeman" is the sense of Irish landscape that it conjures, in between its many fantasies and concoctions. If you take away the hallucinated afterlife that occupies most of the book, what remains? A very poor, simple countryside, with farms and a few police stations and pubs, and miles of bumpy roads, sodden fields, muck, brambles, dripping copses, and gorse. There is almost nothing else: people ride bicycles everywhere. When they think they might become rich, they dream of changes of clothes. There is almost no mention of what they eat or drink. It is an impoverished landscape -- and in relation to it, O'Brien's perverse and perfervid inventions are even more desperate, more necessary, and more painful.
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LibraryThing member paradoxosalpha
I am puzzled by the jacket copy on the John F. Byrne Irish Literature Series edition of The Third Policeman, which calls it a "brilliant comic novel." Surely, this story is dark as dark can be, and portrays a tragedy with exacting, clinical detail. The tale is in fact profoundly absurd, and
To experience the full effect of this novel, I recommend avoiding advance glosses of the plot, although the plot is really only a fraction of the value of reading it, but this plot is reeled out in an unusual and impressive manner. Moreover, such glosses tend to have inaccuracies, like the jacket copy's misconception that the "narrator ... is introduced to ... de Selby's view that the earth is not round but 'sausage-shaped'" while at the police station, when in fact he has clearly done his exhaustive study of de Selby long before.
The 1999 introduction by Denis Donoghue insists on quoting a piece of a letter from author Flann O'Brien to William Saroyan, in which the ending of the book is perfectly spoiled. This same letter excerpt also appears at the end of the book, having been appended by the editors at the original (posthumous) 1967 publication, apparently in the belief that readers might need this assistance after failing to comprehend what they had read, despite it being as plainly put as possible. Donoghue's introduction is otherwise worth reading (after the novel), with its brief biography of O'Brien (pseudonym of Brian O'Nolan) and a debatable attempt to classify the book as Menippean satire.
But the real attraction of this book is the wonderful language, which alternates among three modes. There are artful descriptions of imponderables. "The silence in the room was so unusually quiet that the beginning of it seemed rather loud when the utter stillness of the end of it had been encountered" (105). There are careful reviews of academic argumentation. "His conclusion was that 'hammering is anything but what it appears to be'; such a statement, if not open to explicit refutation, seems unnecessary and unenlightening" (144-5 n). And there are personal encounters featuring ambivalent dialogues in spare and careful language. "And as I went upon my way I was slightly glad that I had met him" (49).
The book is organized into twelve chapters. If these reflect an esoteric infrastructure such as astrological houses, I haven't persuaded myself so. The pace of the prose is fast, even if the pace of events described is sometimes so slow as to be entirely immobile. The Third Policeman had been on my virtual TBR pile for many years, and my actual one for some months, when I finally read it in a matter of a few days. Alas, I may read it again!
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checkered with the narrator's preoccupation with a perverse body of scholarship surrounding a narcoleptic alchemist. But that's bicycling for you.To experience the full effect of this novel, I recommend avoiding advance glosses of the plot, although the plot is really only a fraction of the value of reading it, but this plot is reeled out in an unusual and impressive manner. Moreover, such glosses tend to have inaccuracies, like the jacket copy's misconception that the "narrator ... is introduced to ... de Selby's view that the earth is not round but 'sausage-shaped'" while at the police station, when in fact he has clearly done his exhaustive study of de Selby long before.
The 1999 introduction by Denis Donoghue insists on quoting a piece of a letter from author Flann O'Brien to William Saroyan, in which the ending of the book is perfectly spoiled. This same letter excerpt also appears at the end of the book, having been appended by the editors at the original (posthumous) 1967 publication, apparently in the belief that readers might need this assistance after failing to comprehend what they had read, despite it being as plainly put as possible. Donoghue's introduction is otherwise worth reading (after the novel), with its brief biography of O'Brien (pseudonym of Brian O'Nolan) and a debatable attempt to classify the book as Menippean satire.
But the real attraction of this book is the wonderful language, which alternates among three modes. There are artful descriptions of imponderables. "The silence in the room was so unusually quiet that the beginning of it seemed rather loud when the utter stillness of the end of it had been encountered" (105). There are careful reviews of academic argumentation. "His conclusion was that 'hammering is anything but what it appears to be'; such a statement, if not open to explicit refutation, seems unnecessary and unenlightening" (144-5 n). And there are personal encounters featuring ambivalent dialogues in spare and careful language. "And as I went upon my way I was slightly glad that I had met him" (49).
The book is organized into twelve chapters. If these reflect an esoteric infrastructure such as astrological houses, I haven't persuaded myself so. The pace of the prose is fast, even if the pace of events described is sometimes so slow as to be entirely immobile. The Third Policeman had been on my virtual TBR pile for many years, and my actual one for some months, when I finally read it in a matter of a few days. Alas, I may read it again!
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LibraryThing member dtw42
A surreal experience, this: as if Spike Milligan and Franz Kafka drafted an Alice in Wonderland for grownups, then handed it off to PKD and M Night Shyamalan for rewrites. The absurdist Irish whimsy humour and running gag about bicycles will either tickle you or they won't. There are a couple of
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genuinely creepy scenes (one near the start and one near the end), and a twist that will perhaps only partially satisfy a rationalist's desire to have the preceding events explained... Show Less
LibraryThing member TheBookJunky
Bizarrely good. An aura of strangeness tinged the first few pages, and then it intensified, and then there was a surreal tumble down the rabbit hole into a very curious world. A place where "...the trees were active where they stood." You need to "use your internal imagination".
Descriptions and
Some of the incidental descriptions of the land, the surroundings, were beautiful. "The dawn was contagious, spreading rapidly about the heavens. Birds were stirring and the great kingly trees were being pleasingly interfered with by the first breezes."
"The road...ran away westwards in the mist of the early morning, running cunningly through the little hills and going to some trouble to visit tiny towns which were not, strictly speaking, on its way."
Time and space are interchangeable. "... he led the way heavily into the middle of the morning." This is not logical, yet it makes sense.
Inanimate things don't become animated but they do assume a different essence, all explainable by the Atomic Theory. Which again made a weird sort of illogical sense.
"...you would know how certain the sureness of certainty is"
A delightful, bendy-mind kind of book that will take your brain out for a run, and then won't return it to the same spot.
Descriptions and
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events and expounded philosophies sort of made a weak and tenuous sense. The edge of sense. Until you realise it was making no sense at all and you were lost again. But then another promising thread of logic is offered and eagerly grasped. It only takes you deeper.Some of the incidental descriptions of the land, the surroundings, were beautiful. "The dawn was contagious, spreading rapidly about the heavens. Birds were stirring and the great kingly trees were being pleasingly interfered with by the first breezes."
"The road...ran away westwards in the mist of the early morning, running cunningly through the little hills and going to some trouble to visit tiny towns which were not, strictly speaking, on its way."
Time and space are interchangeable. "... he led the way heavily into the middle of the morning." This is not logical, yet it makes sense.
Inanimate things don't become animated but they do assume a different essence, all explainable by the Atomic Theory. Which again made a weird sort of illogical sense.
"...you would know how certain the sureness of certainty is"
A delightful, bendy-mind kind of book that will take your brain out for a run, and then won't return it to the same spot.
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LibraryThing member RobertDay
I was recommended this book many years ago and it has probably taken me forty-five years to get around to reading it. In one way, that is a loss; in another, it is perhaps fortunate, because as a younger reader I might not have appreciated all the connections that a perusal of this text throw up.
The language is certainly highly redolent and I found myself at times reading some of it out loud for the sheer joy of it.
Perhaps the strangest thing, though, was that whilst reading the book, I had a BBC radio news/current affairs programme on; and I became aware that the items I heard - an interview with a professor of political economy and migration statistics from the London School of Economics, followed by a piece on trying to get an AI to write topical jokes - seemed to acquire some of the oblique propensities of O'Brien's prose. Either the world was suddenly revealed to me in its true surreal nature, or the book itself was warping reality. Perhaps de Selby could enlighten me....
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On one hand, it is a surreal masterpiece; on the other, a dark fable; on yet another, an exploration of the loquaciousness of the Irish mind. I do not yet know if O'Brien was recording the colloquial speech of Dublin in the 1930s, or if some of the terminology in the book was his own coinage, which professional Irish creative personalities have over time picked up and shared with us. Suffice it to say, I kept coming across words and phrases I recognised.The language is certainly highly redolent and I found myself at times reading some of it out loud for the sheer joy of it.
Perhaps the strangest thing, though, was that whilst reading the book, I had a BBC radio news/current affairs programme on; and I became aware that the items I heard - an interview with a professor of political economy and migration statistics from the London School of Economics, followed by a piece on trying to get an AI to write topical jokes - seemed to acquire some of the oblique propensities of O'Brien's prose. Either the world was suddenly revealed to me in its true surreal nature, or the book itself was warping reality. Perhaps de Selby could enlighten me....
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LibraryThing member zibilee
In this surreal and absurdist novel, a one-legged gentleman farmer is easily swayed into concocting the murder of a man believed to have a black box full of money. His partner in crime, the loathsome Divney, refuses to reveal the whereabouts of the black box for several years, ostensibly to avoid
A few months ago I was at a party and met a wonderful girl by the name of Melissa who's studying literature in college. We got into a deep conversation about books and she told me she was taking a literature course based on the books that have appeared in the television series Lost. I was greatly intrigued by this class and wondered aloud why there were no classes like this when I was in college. As she was describing some of the books she was reading, she began to get very animated about this particular book. From what she told me, it sounded like a trip and a half, and like something that I just couldn't pass up. When she got to the part about the relationship between bicycles and humans, I knew I was going to read this book and it was going to be fantastic. I wasn't disappointed in the least and I can only assume that Flan O'Brien was a genius, not only in the way he creates this particular story but in its off-the-wall narration. It was one hell of a weird ride, but I must confess it made my top book of the year, which says a lot considering I've read some pretty good stuff.
This book is told through a deceptively simple style of prose. Though we know that the gentleman farmer is up to no good and is, in effect, a murderer, I couldn't help but get invested in his tale and come to feel for the man. When he finally goes to retrieve the black box from its hidden location, old man Mathers has some seriously disturbing and puzzling news for him. It's not very clear just what this news means, but the farmer is not only flummoxed and enraged, he's also scared and sets out to find a way to separate this box from its owner. The first sections of this book differed from all the rest in that most of it was easily comprehensible. Farmer, box and old man were eerily interpreted but pretty straightforward. Had this book continued on in this vein, it wouldn't have been anything to write home about. Luckily for me, the book picked up a lot of steam and became increasingly bizarre and funny as soon as the farmer stepped inside the police station.
As the farmer arrives at the station house, he realizes that its dimensions and attributes are physically impossible. This troubles him greatly and he begins to think that coming to the station to fill out a lost item form may have been a bad idea. He has no idea what's in store for him when he finally meets the first two policeman. These policeman are inordinately consumed with bicycles and question the man endlessly about them, a fact that the man doesn't understand at all. When a strange gentleman comes into the station and admits that his bicycle has been stolen again, the police mount a search for the missing bike and our perplexed farmer finds out that in this strange place, bicycles are a thing of intentional menace and danger. This confuses him and the reader shares his feelings of confusion and foreboding, knowing that there is much about the bicycles that we just cannot know. It's also very comical that there is so much malice and weirdness associated with the bicycles, and a lot of this story is utterly absurd and nonsensical. It's all a whirlwind of comic perplexity, and as such, the only thing I could do was let it wash over me with a sense of ludicrous wonder.
Meeting the second policeman puts the farmer at a greater sense of unease, for the man is an inventor of the highest order but his inventions make absolutely no sense in any way that inventions should. One example is the finely crafted box. This box is about palm-sized and is beautifully inlaid with intricate carvings and gold. As the farmer examines the box, he comes to discover that this box hold two hundred identical boxes of the same quality, each small enough to fit inside the other. The smallest box is so tiny that the naked eye cannot discern it, and this, in addition to all the other wild inventions, has a frightening effect on the farmer. As more and more inventions are introduced to the farmer, he becomes increasingly more afraid for reasons the reader can't understand, and decides that he will no longer speak to the second policeman for fear of what may happen to him. Some of these inventions are amazingly bizarre and mystifying and others are silly and nonsensical. The reaction of the farmer is one that confuses the reader and it's not until the end of the book that we understand why.
When the policeman reveal their knowledge of the farmer's misdeed, they decide to build a gallows and hang him. Despite the fact that they have shown him their fabulous inventions and the secrets of eternity, they must punish him for his crime, and set off to get things prepared. This is when the farmer remembers the deal he struck with the leader of a strange band of one legged men, and he calls to him for help. When a female bicycle comes to his aid, the farmer escapes to the hovel of the third policeman and learns the truth about all he has seen and heard. This third policeman is off the grid and is operating under the guise of secrecy. He reveals the real secret of eternity that is hidden to all but him and he shares all his secrets with the farmer. Now the farmer is deathly afraid and goes to seek out old Divney for help. But when he reaches Divney, things become frighteningly clear to him and the farmer realizes just what has happened to him and why he's trapped in this absurd and strange conundrum. All of this sounds menacing but it's also comically brilliant and unlike anything I've ever read before.
I know my review of this book doesn't do it justice, and frankly, I doubt if any review ever could. It was a strange amalgam of farce, satire and horror, and told a fantastical tale that kept me flipping pages to see what O'Brien would come up with next. Nothing was predictable or ordinary, and even the hidden nuances of the book were strangely surreal and wildly funny. A lot will probably never make sense to me, and in a way it reminded me a lot of Alice's time in Wonderland. It had the same feel of crafty nonsensicalness and was full of amazing and unorthodox components that made the whole wildly atypical and divergent from anything I have ever read before. If you're in the mood for something strange that will knock your socks off, this is the book for you! It's a book I will be pondering over for a long time.
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discovery. This forces the farmer to spend every waking moment in Diveny's shadow, for fear that he'll recover the box without sharing its contents. When the location of the box is finally revealed, the farmer goes off to retrieve it and discovers that old man Mathers, the man who was supposedly murdered, is actually alive and well. Trying to concoct another way of separating the box from his owner, the farmer devises a plan to go down to the police station to fill out a false theft report, only to discover that a world of strangeness and unpredictability awaits him. As the policemen revolve around him in nonsensical circles, the farmer discovers a secret plot involving the melding of bicycles and men (!!) that threatens to take over the countryside. He also learns that these seemingly benign men have the secret keys to eternity and the ability to create fabulous and wonderful inventions that defy the mind's capability to perceive them. Though puzzled by what the policeman present to him, he soon discovers he's in serious danger and his only hope for survival is a congregation of wandering one-legged men and a strangely female bicycle. Both uproariously funny and puzzlingly sinister, this work of comic genius written by Flan O'Brien was published posthumously in the 60's and is still as representative of the enigmas of life today as it was back then.A few months ago I was at a party and met a wonderful girl by the name of Melissa who's studying literature in college. We got into a deep conversation about books and she told me she was taking a literature course based on the books that have appeared in the television series Lost. I was greatly intrigued by this class and wondered aloud why there were no classes like this when I was in college. As she was describing some of the books she was reading, she began to get very animated about this particular book. From what she told me, it sounded like a trip and a half, and like something that I just couldn't pass up. When she got to the part about the relationship between bicycles and humans, I knew I was going to read this book and it was going to be fantastic. I wasn't disappointed in the least and I can only assume that Flan O'Brien was a genius, not only in the way he creates this particular story but in its off-the-wall narration. It was one hell of a weird ride, but I must confess it made my top book of the year, which says a lot considering I've read some pretty good stuff.
This book is told through a deceptively simple style of prose. Though we know that the gentleman farmer is up to no good and is, in effect, a murderer, I couldn't help but get invested in his tale and come to feel for the man. When he finally goes to retrieve the black box from its hidden location, old man Mathers has some seriously disturbing and puzzling news for him. It's not very clear just what this news means, but the farmer is not only flummoxed and enraged, he's also scared and sets out to find a way to separate this box from its owner. The first sections of this book differed from all the rest in that most of it was easily comprehensible. Farmer, box and old man were eerily interpreted but pretty straightforward. Had this book continued on in this vein, it wouldn't have been anything to write home about. Luckily for me, the book picked up a lot of steam and became increasingly bizarre and funny as soon as the farmer stepped inside the police station.
As the farmer arrives at the station house, he realizes that its dimensions and attributes are physically impossible. This troubles him greatly and he begins to think that coming to the station to fill out a lost item form may have been a bad idea. He has no idea what's in store for him when he finally meets the first two policeman. These policeman are inordinately consumed with bicycles and question the man endlessly about them, a fact that the man doesn't understand at all. When a strange gentleman comes into the station and admits that his bicycle has been stolen again, the police mount a search for the missing bike and our perplexed farmer finds out that in this strange place, bicycles are a thing of intentional menace and danger. This confuses him and the reader shares his feelings of confusion and foreboding, knowing that there is much about the bicycles that we just cannot know. It's also very comical that there is so much malice and weirdness associated with the bicycles, and a lot of this story is utterly absurd and nonsensical. It's all a whirlwind of comic perplexity, and as such, the only thing I could do was let it wash over me with a sense of ludicrous wonder.
Meeting the second policeman puts the farmer at a greater sense of unease, for the man is an inventor of the highest order but his inventions make absolutely no sense in any way that inventions should. One example is the finely crafted box. This box is about palm-sized and is beautifully inlaid with intricate carvings and gold. As the farmer examines the box, he comes to discover that this box hold two hundred identical boxes of the same quality, each small enough to fit inside the other. The smallest box is so tiny that the naked eye cannot discern it, and this, in addition to all the other wild inventions, has a frightening effect on the farmer. As more and more inventions are introduced to the farmer, he becomes increasingly more afraid for reasons the reader can't understand, and decides that he will no longer speak to the second policeman for fear of what may happen to him. Some of these inventions are amazingly bizarre and mystifying and others are silly and nonsensical. The reaction of the farmer is one that confuses the reader and it's not until the end of the book that we understand why.
When the policeman reveal their knowledge of the farmer's misdeed, they decide to build a gallows and hang him. Despite the fact that they have shown him their fabulous inventions and the secrets of eternity, they must punish him for his crime, and set off to get things prepared. This is when the farmer remembers the deal he struck with the leader of a strange band of one legged men, and he calls to him for help. When a female bicycle comes to his aid, the farmer escapes to the hovel of the third policeman and learns the truth about all he has seen and heard. This third policeman is off the grid and is operating under the guise of secrecy. He reveals the real secret of eternity that is hidden to all but him and he shares all his secrets with the farmer. Now the farmer is deathly afraid and goes to seek out old Divney for help. But when he reaches Divney, things become frighteningly clear to him and the farmer realizes just what has happened to him and why he's trapped in this absurd and strange conundrum. All of this sounds menacing but it's also comically brilliant and unlike anything I've ever read before.
I know my review of this book doesn't do it justice, and frankly, I doubt if any review ever could. It was a strange amalgam of farce, satire and horror, and told a fantastical tale that kept me flipping pages to see what O'Brien would come up with next. Nothing was predictable or ordinary, and even the hidden nuances of the book were strangely surreal and wildly funny. A lot will probably never make sense to me, and in a way it reminded me a lot of Alice's time in Wonderland. It had the same feel of crafty nonsensicalness and was full of amazing and unorthodox components that made the whole wildly atypical and divergent from anything I have ever read before. If you're in the mood for something strange that will knock your socks off, this is the book for you! It's a book I will be pondering over for a long time.
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LibraryThing member MonsterGear
I spent most of my time reading this book with my brow furrowed in a sort of "What the...?" expression, but that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it. Those who like to imagine the look of a scene while reading will have a fiendish but delightful time trying to get their heads around some of the
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descriptions in this story, and the dialogue and premise are first-rate. Still, a difficult one to recommend for any who are not prepared for one of the more bizarre reads they may encounter. Show Less
LibraryThing member macha
4 and a half stars. one of my favourite writers, and every once in a while it's time to reread this one. it's a very funny spoof of science, logic, academic writing, and metaphysics, chaotic but organized, elegant and playful. everyone should own it. though i warn you, it's gonna lead to reading a
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lot more of Brian O'Nolan's body of work in every pseudonym and style - even his hilarious and very pointed journalistic columns for the Irish Times read just the same. but also, this classic jumps every genre line (surrealistic sf? existential mystery? Lewis Carrollist discourse delivered in absurdist mode? an allegory about heaven and hell? okay, all of the above, and more, in the loose and unassuming structure of an Irish tall tale). but this read, i marvelled at how the narrative seamlessly describes quantum space, utilizing string theory, as it demonstrates the folding up of dimensions and peers at the possible contents of a Schrodinger's box - even though the book was written in 1940, and appears weightless in content and style, while it reads like a fever dream. Show Less
LibraryThing member blanderson
A genuinely funny and odd novel, that may have been dampened/spoiled by O'Brien's note at the end, which gives away the ending and kills the suspense of the last 30 pages. DO NOT FLIP TO THE END OF THE BOOK! I like reading all the notes at the end of these fancy editions, but usually they don't
A hilariously metaphysical comedy riffing on the nature of subjectivity and the everything-goes world of atomic relativity. O'Brien applies this weird version of Reality in a good satire of society---the police continually trying to 'control' the world, even when it is only themselves causing the chaos.
The end of the book did lag, but overall a very good read.
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contain spoilers.A hilariously metaphysical comedy riffing on the nature of subjectivity and the everything-goes world of atomic relativity. O'Brien applies this weird version of Reality in a good satire of society---the police continually trying to 'control' the world, even when it is only themselves causing the chaos.
The end of the book did lag, but overall a very good read.
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LibraryThing member piccoline
Another great work from Flann O'Brien. Delightfully weird, though it all comes together in the end. And, as usual, hilarious. (If you're a fan of _Lost_ you may already know that a character on the show was shown reading this book at one point, for a second or less. It's fun to read this book with
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that in mind as well. Almost certainly true that the readers/creators of that show had read this book before they even started. Lots of interesting resonances.) Show Less
LibraryThing member casspurp
I rarely say that once I pick up a certain book, I can't put it down because the phrase is often hyperbole, but in the case of The Third Policeman, I actually found myself trying to read as much as possible in order to continue through the story. O'Brien's dry wit matched with social criticism
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mixed to create a brilliant and absurd masterpiece. The protagonist isn't necessarily likeable, but that's okay because his soul, Joe, makes up for what his host lacks. I don't think I will ever look at bicycles the same way again and not since Ulysses has a book of mine been filled with so many marginal notes. O'Brien wasn't shying away from experimentation which is at its best in the footnotes. It's easy to disagree with O'Brien when he proclaimed the only good thing about this novel is its plot. He has done things within these pages which Western readers think of as commonplace today and he's done them masterfully and to his own degree of absurd perfection. I would love to teach this in a course on either Anglo-Irish Literature or Absurdist Literature. It's brilliant. Show Less
LibraryThing member Osbaldistone
Wallace Steven's wrote in the opening of his "Notes toward a Supreme Fiction"
Begin, ephebe, by perceiving the idea
Of this invention, this invented world,
This inconceivable idea of the sun
You must become an ignorant man again
And see the sun again with an ignorant eye
And see it clearly in the
Flann O' Brien seems to have succeeded in becoming ignorant of most of what makes the world work (and make sense) before assuming the role of narrator and protagonist in this absorbing, fantastical ride through a rural Ireland that (I fear?/hope?) doesn't exist.
After being led into participating in a murder/robbery (no spoiler here - it's in the opening line of the book), our narrator finds that he has slipped into a world just beyond the one he's spent his life within, and this world is running on some other set of rules and a logic that seems both bizarre and convincing. Throughout his perigrinations through this alternate world, our protagonist seems to find something akin to hope and normalcy whenever he is outdoors or where he can observe and appreciate nature, but seems to slip into confusion and depression when indoors. Is the author commenting on nature vs the man-made (or man-imagined) world, or is it simply easier to give the character a break from the strain of this odd world by letting him walk in the sunshine once in awhile. Our protagonist seems to have slipped down the rabbit hole and, as is always the case in such alternate worlds, everyone except our rather poor choice of hero seems to find this world perfectly normal. I say poor choice simply because he's not very heroic, and not that easy to like at first. On the other hand, he's the perfect protagonist/narrator, in that he shares his view of this strange world he's dropped into with marvelous flair. There is a continuous sense of being lost when reading this story, but never so lost that you can't imagine finding a familiar path just around the next corner.
Accompanying the narrative is a running commetary (with footnotes) of the philosophical, metaphysical, and pseudo-scientific writings and life of a (luckily) fictional Professor.de Selby, along with his many critics and commentators. One could see how the world our narrator finds himself in could be, in some ways, the world that de Selby posits as the real word in his writings. But it's curious that the narrator has such a high regard for de Selby, while noting in each citation just one more of de Selby's theories that don't hold water. The narrator seems to be convinced that de Selby must be brilliant partly because de Selby is difficult to comprehend, and partly because his ideas don't seem to align with reality. de Selby seems to be the classic 18th-19th century English eccentric and the narrator takes him to be worthy of note primarily due to his social status.
I'm uncertain about the way the running commentary on de Selby fits in. It seems to suit the tone and point of view of the novel, but it's significance, beyond the observations made above, escapes me. However, the main story itself is a blast to read; the characters are just bizarre enough to provide many chuckles; the workings of this strange world are fascinating to contemplate; and our hero's situation and attempt to extricate himself from it succeeds in gaining our support (not bad for a murderer and robber).
This classic work would suit many sci-fi fans, or anyone else who enjoys slipping into a parallel reality once in awhile. A recommended read.
Os.
Oh, and you may never feel totally comfortable on your bicycle again.
Begin, ephebe, by perceiving the idea
Of this invention, this invented world,
This inconceivable idea of the sun
You must become an ignorant man again
And see the sun again with an ignorant eye
And see it clearly in the
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idea of it.Flann O' Brien seems to have succeeded in becoming ignorant of most of what makes the world work (and make sense) before assuming the role of narrator and protagonist in this absorbing, fantastical ride through a rural Ireland that (I fear?/hope?) doesn't exist.
After being led into participating in a murder/robbery (no spoiler here - it's in the opening line of the book), our narrator finds that he has slipped into a world just beyond the one he's spent his life within, and this world is running on some other set of rules and a logic that seems both bizarre and convincing. Throughout his perigrinations through this alternate world, our protagonist seems to find something akin to hope and normalcy whenever he is outdoors or where he can observe and appreciate nature, but seems to slip into confusion and depression when indoors. Is the author commenting on nature vs the man-made (or man-imagined) world, or is it simply easier to give the character a break from the strain of this odd world by letting him walk in the sunshine once in awhile. Our protagonist seems to have slipped down the rabbit hole and, as is always the case in such alternate worlds, everyone except our rather poor choice of hero seems to find this world perfectly normal. I say poor choice simply because he's not very heroic, and not that easy to like at first. On the other hand, he's the perfect protagonist/narrator, in that he shares his view of this strange world he's dropped into with marvelous flair. There is a continuous sense of being lost when reading this story, but never so lost that you can't imagine finding a familiar path just around the next corner.
Accompanying the narrative is a running commetary (with footnotes) of the philosophical, metaphysical, and pseudo-scientific writings and life of a (luckily) fictional Professor.de Selby, along with his many critics and commentators. One could see how the world our narrator finds himself in could be, in some ways, the world that de Selby posits as the real word in his writings. But it's curious that the narrator has such a high regard for de Selby, while noting in each citation just one more of de Selby's theories that don't hold water. The narrator seems to be convinced that de Selby must be brilliant partly because de Selby is difficult to comprehend, and partly because his ideas don't seem to align with reality. de Selby seems to be the classic 18th-19th century English eccentric and the narrator takes him to be worthy of note primarily due to his social status.
I'm uncertain about the way the running commentary on de Selby fits in. It seems to suit the tone and point of view of the novel, but it's significance, beyond the observations made above, escapes me. However, the main story itself is a blast to read; the characters are just bizarre enough to provide many chuckles; the workings of this strange world are fascinating to contemplate; and our hero's situation and attempt to extricate himself from it succeeds in gaining our support (not bad for a murderer and robber).
This classic work would suit many sci-fi fans, or anyone else who enjoys slipping into a parallel reality once in awhile. A recommended read.
Os.
Oh, and you may never feel totally comfortable on your bicycle again.
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LibraryThing member beabatllori
Pay attention now. In order to enjoy this book, you must mix equal parts of:
Kafka
Borges
Douglas Adams
LSD
Stir carefully. If your head hurts, put it down for a while and take an aspirin. Other than that, it's brilliant. Just brilliant.
Kafka
Borges
Douglas Adams
LSD
Stir carefully. If your head hurts, put it down for a while and take an aspirin. Other than that, it's brilliant. Just brilliant.
LibraryThing member KurtWombat
The Third Policeman
About twenty pages into this slim exercise of insanity, I considered tossing the book in the corner and allowing it to decay naturally beneath the hot breath of many afternoon suns. Those pages were an utter vacuum—its world and its characters were inert, lifeless and sucking
About twenty pages into this slim exercise of insanity, I considered tossing the book in the corner and allowing it to decay naturally beneath the hot breath of many afternoon suns. Those pages were an utter vacuum—its world and its characters were inert, lifeless and sucking
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the air out of room I was sitting in. Then something happened and in the words of Nat King Cole: the ceiling fell in and the bottom fell out, I went into a spin and I started to shout. Almost literally, and for reasons that become more obvious later in the book, the novel comes to a stop and seems to start again but this time ironically with a pulse and a direction. So be patient. The main character, who has forgotten his own name, is suddenly forced to look at the world as if for the first time and struggle to identify what he is seeing. Much of the novel is about how we see the world. How what we create in art and science are merely steps in a staircase to gain a better look at the world around us--but we must be careful what stairs we climb. Virtually everything we consider real is really an artificial concept. Just as words are not the thing itself, I cannot eat the word “apple”, so science is not really the world we live in nor is philosophy really the reason we are here. (Did I really even read this book?) THE THIRD POLICEMAN plays with these ideas by creating a world where virtually everything is redefined for the main character—including his own identity. Is he defined by his suddenly chatty soul or by how the police see him (which seems to change every page) or by his relationship with a bicycle—more complicated than you can imagine? As ALICE IN WONDERLAND created a fantastic world alternating between menace and amusement from the twisted wreckage of childhood, so THE THIRD POLICEMAN created an equally crazy and amazing world from the wreckage of science and perception. The language is playful and some passages so drop dead perfect they beg rereading. The characters are all madly bent as if viewed through a prism and you never know where the story will take you from one moment to the next. Reading this I was amazed that it was written when it was. It felt a minimum 25 years ahead of its time and it seems impossible that Douglass Adams did not read this before creating his marvelous HITCHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY series. Not lightly do I add this to my list of favorite books, I was both surprised and amazed. Show Less
LibraryThing member delta351
I was originally attracted to this book after it was featured in an episode of Lost, where Jacob was reading it as J Locke was thrown out the window by his father. It took me a while to track down a copy of the book, and a while longer before I actually read it. The only other Irish author or book
I found the book quite readable, and would have been even more so had I skipped the footnotes. The plot was fairly easy to follow, as much as I understood. The quirky concepts like the sausage universe and the bicycle personification were quite entertaining. The copy that I read had some footnotes in it, which helped me to understand some parts. I still really don't understand the entire bicycle concept, but it will prob make more sense if I ever read it again. Bicycles were very common back when the story was originally written, and prob had a definitive role in life in Ireland at that time. I thought the representation of eternity was good also.
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that I had read was Joyce's "Portrait of a Young Man..".I found the book quite readable, and would have been even more so had I skipped the footnotes. The plot was fairly easy to follow, as much as I understood. The quirky concepts like the sausage universe and the bicycle personification were quite entertaining. The copy that I read had some footnotes in it, which helped me to understand some parts. I still really don't understand the entire bicycle concept, but it will prob make more sense if I ever read it again. Bicycles were very common back when the story was originally written, and prob had a definitive role in life in Ireland at that time. I thought the representation of eternity was good also.
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LibraryThing member tikitu-reviews
A novel I never get tired of. The stark insanity of Sergeant Pluck's lines ("Would it surprise you to learn that the Atomic Theory is at work in this parish?") continues to delight at every reading.
For those who haven't: the (anti-)hero becomes trapped in a surreal and distorted version of his
"Not everybody knows how I killed old Phillip Mathers, smashing his jaw in with a spade; but first it is better to speak of my friendship with John Divney because it was he who first knocked old Mathers down by giving him a great blow in the neck with a special bicycle-pump which he manufactured himself out of a hollow iron bar. Divney was a strong civil man but he was lazy and idle-minded. He was personally responsible for the whole idea in the first place. It was he who told me to bring my spade. He was the one who gave the orders on the occasion and also the explanations when they were called for."
For those who haven't: the (anti-)hero becomes trapped in a surreal and distorted version of his
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Irish village, where (as his soul, Joe, points out) "anything can be said and will be true and will have to be believed." The surreality is delightful, but so is the style. Here's the magnificent opening paragraph:"Not everybody knows how I killed old Phillip Mathers, smashing his jaw in with a spade; but first it is better to speak of my friendship with John Divney because it was he who first knocked old Mathers down by giving him a great blow in the neck with a special bicycle-pump which he manufactured himself out of a hollow iron bar. Divney was a strong civil man but he was lazy and idle-minded. He was personally responsible for the whole idea in the first place. It was he who told me to bring my spade. He was the one who gave the orders on the occasion and also the explanations when they were called for."
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LibraryThing member flydodofly
I had to stop reading because I could not wrap my mind around this book. I feel like a terrible failure, especially when I see how excited everyone else seems to be.
LibraryThing member ritaer
Perhaps I do not share the Irish sense of humor. This novel is consistenly described as a comic masterpiece. True, the send-ups of scholarly commentary, in the form of footnotes upon the fictional philosopher de Selby, are amusing to an academic mind. But they are inbedded in a tale every step of
The narration by Jim Norton is performed masterfully. Each character is distinct and intriguing as voiced.
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which must make the thinking reader wonder why one should care about the protagonist. The protagonist is a murderer of a particularly vile and mindless type, who becomes lost in a surreal landscape while searching for the moneybox he hopes to find in his victim's home. He meets his victim, unaccountable come back to life; the king of the one legged men, among whom he is numbered; policemen with wild theories of atom interchange between bicycles and their riders; and a lift that leads to an underground complex which he is told is eternity. His adventures bemuse but do not engage, since at no point does he seem to engage seriously with his own deeds or his surroundings. When he is contemned to hang for another crime, which he did not commit, he never meditates about the essential justice of his position. Even when his victim seems to reappaer in the form of the third policeman of the title he is only bewildered, never chastened. This work may be, as the notes describe it, a surreal presentation of hell, but it is a hell deprived of meaning. The narration by Jim Norton is performed masterfully. Each character is distinct and intriguing as voiced.
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LibraryThing member awssu
I've worn out several copies of this just by reading it so often.
LibraryThing member malrubius
Hilarious and absurd and surreal and beautifully strange. Great writing, great characters, great setting. I was disappointed to find that I didn't understand everything and it had to be explained in an author's note at the end.
LibraryThing member frank_oconnor
This is the black stuff, all right - pure genius wrapped in a satire of an enigma of a riddle on a bicycle. Comedy writing at speed with the breaks off. A real pleasure.
LibraryThing member Carl_Hayes
Overflowing with fine comic writing. It gets highly psychedelic at times. Something of a fusion of Kafka, Beckett and Alice in Wonderland.
Pretty much the most plausible version of Hell I've read.
Pretty much the most plausible version of Hell I've read.
LibraryThing member adzebill
I had figured out this was in the vein of Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, or The Man Who Was Thursday, but the ending was even neater than I anticipated. A fabulous piece of absurdism, both funny and unsettling, told in a dry and elliptical tone in a distinctly roundabout Irish way.
LibraryThing member PaulMysterioso
There's something about Irish writers: Swift, Laurence Sterne, Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, Beckett and Flann O'Brien and their ability to take the commonplace, the mundane even, and transpose it into something rich and strange (to quote Shakespeare), something at once horrifying and hilarious.
Flann
Flann
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O'Brien's "The Third Policeman" is at once a parody of the hard-boiled genre of detective fiction, modern physics and just plain silliness. But where does one stop and the other begin? Show Less
LibraryThing member DekeDastardly
The initially peculiar writing style, which put me in mind of Magnus Mills, grew on me to become a flashback of listening in as a child to Irish adult conversations not quite understanding but feeling strangely comforted in alienation. By the time a character used the word gawm to describe himself
The Third Policeman is throughly entertaining work best read in your favoured rural Irish dialect.
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O'Brien had already drawn me deep into the colloquialism. This is an exaggerated world of a band of wooden legged men and half man half bicycle policemen, and yet there is a straightforward robbery and murder plot underpinning the strangeness. The story has moments of horror, comedy, and tenderness, and segments which exercise the mind with intriguing possibilities of what lies beyond our wordly perceptions of normality. The plot leaves plenty of scope to wander and wonder ahead the various twists and turns. The dreamlike quality of the narrative reflects a stream of unconciousness which becomes clear in a beautifully crafted finale. The book contains numerous footnotes which are undoubtedly clever in their seemingly important referencing of the works and experiences of a fictitious physician and intellectual, though at times these become a tediously distracting sideshow whilst allowing the author to run a parallel story written with a completely different style of prose.The Third Policeman is throughly entertaining work best read in your favoured rural Irish dialect.
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Language
Original language
English
ISBN
9780007247172
Physical description
224 p.; 5.12 inches
Pages
224